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Elishadra
Elishadra The Pain-Giver, the Witch Demigoddess Symbol: Hand with razor-sharp nails Home Plane: Acheron/Avalas/Clangor Alignment: LE Aliases: Elishardia Superior: Maglubiyet Allies: Chelitiara, Vershnat, Borzsanna, Khurgorbaeyag, Bargrivyek Foes: Sheyanna Flaxenstrand, Valkauna, Sharindlar, Haela Brightaxe Servants: Datamar (NE bebelith shapechanger) Servitor Creatures: Marrashi, retrievers, kytons Manifestations: Goblins fear that the avatar of Elishadra lurks deep underground, her razor-sharp nails ready to snatch the unwary. Legends whisper of kings whose brides turned into Elishadra on their wedding nights, leaving them shattered and broken after withstanding the Pain-Giver's idea of fun. Signs of Favor: Elishadra shows her favor and answers divinations through vermin that sparkle like beautiful gems, sparkling centipedes, spiders, and scorpions that chitter secrets to her faithful. Worshipers: Female goblins and female hobgoblins Cleric Alignments: LE, NE Holy Days: Rites propitiating Elishadra are performed by her priestesses monthly, during the waning of the moon. The orgiastic rites of Elishadra are excrutiating for their victims, involving being cast bleeding into pits of carnivorous insects or bound on top of ant hills. Portfolio: Pain, torture, sorcery, vermin, disease Domains: Magic, Animal, Suffering Favored Weapon: Claws Elishadra is one of the three daughters of Vershnat and Maglubiyet. These three sisters plotted the destruction of their sire and, failing, they were cast from Clangor to wander the mortal world. For centuries they roamed seeking worshippers through whose sacrifices they could regain their power. In time they married powerful goblin leaders and overthrew them through wit and treachery. Daily sacrifices of elves, dwarves, kobolds, orcs, and humans quickly replenished their powers. In turn, they were not unkind to their worshippers, for they taught them the arts of torture, deceit, and poison making. As the power of the evil trio grew, so did the power of their priestesses, who spurred on the tribes to greater deeds of slaughter. Ultimately, Maglubiyet recognized their usefulness and accepted them back into the fold, marrying them to his three remaining sons. Elishadra, the most powerful of the three, is married to Khurgorbaeyag. She appears in the guise of an aged goblin crone, her face covered with hideous scars, warts, boils, and ulcers, the nails on her claw-like hands long and browned with age, and her body and clothing filthy and crawling with lice and other vermin. She delights in slow torture and inflicting great pain. Priestesses of Elishadra teach that their patron learned magic by listening to the small vermin that crawled about her nest. While her sisters were preoccupied with their status in goblin society, the crawling things taught Elishadra secrets. After remaining in her nest for a century while vermin fed her and whispered to her, she followed them to the mother of all vermin, a mysterious being associated with a wide variety of other goddesses - Lolth, Cegilune, Wee Jas, Beltar, and many others, though the entity was possibly none of them. In return for this instruction, she gave the entity her living heart, replacing it with a pulsing, chitinous creature that forever after takes its share of her blood as it keeps her life flowing through her veins. She returned as a powerful adept who won the attention of Khurgorbaeyag, a god almost as cruel as herself. Publically, Elishadra is subordinate to Maglubiyet and her husband, Khurgorbaeyag. Her priesthood acts out this charade. The priests of Khurgorbaeyag teach that slavery and oppression begin in the home, and that women exist to improve the morale of the men. They teach that women must be obedient in all things, aquiescing instantly to every one of the desires of their mates. They claim many things, and in public the priestesses of Elishadra agree. They act in an advisory role, supporting goblin soldiers with magic and supporting goblin slavers with the torture arts. When the men are away at war, or when their back are turned, or when they beg in private to be on the receiving end of discipline, then another story is told. One myth, hidden from all but initiates of Elishadra, has it that Elishadra is not truly Maglubiyet's daughter at all, that she was born after her mother Vershnat swallowed a spider. The priesthood of Elishadra teaches that the male gods are irrelevant, that their zealous insistence on the superiority of their gender reveals just how insecure they really are. Elishadra's husband Khurgorbaeyag is used as the primary illustration of this fact, and many secret stories are told of his legendary cowardice before non-goblin gods, of times when he fled the gods of the dwarves, orcs, or even the kobolds to cower in his lair, and of the punishments Elishadra administered to him in private - punishments he secretly craves. Of all the goblinoid gods (save perhaps Belgrath, the bugbear goddess of the earth) Elishadra is closest to her mother Vershnat. Elishadra is privy to Vershnat's innermost thoughts (or, at least, so she believes) and in return she acts as her mother's enforcer, punishing those who slight her. Elishadra's fiendish mount, Datamar, is a many-legged spider steed with the ability to assume the shape of any humanoid. He often uses this power to infiltrate other societies and lure victims to his mistress. Category:Demipowers Category:Goblin pantheon